New JOB...in Forensic Engineering

Well, after an unfortunate and unplanned departure from my position in November, I am going back to work. Last week I accepted a job offer and will be joining as a Structural Engineer, working in Forensic Engineering. I don't need to go into too great of detail (as some things don't need to be blogged...because they could be boring to some), but I'll provide this summary as noted on the company website:

...engineers, environmental scientists, and business analysts use proven forensic techniques to probe and analyze construction accidents and disputes, residential and commercial problems, product failures, motor vehicle and marine accidents,and industrial fires and explosions of all kinds. Our job is to find out what happened and why, from the cause and origin through the extent of loss. In many cases, we can point the way toward a speedy disposition of the claim.

I may find myself going to court as an expert witness or such, plus an abundance of report writing, and communicating with lawyers, insurance companies, and more. It's going to be a big departure from the design roots I have been working in for the 6 1/2 years, but I'll call on my experience out in the field, performing inspections, and analysis of existing structures... I am excited for the possibilities, the responsibilities, and finding myself into a new field within structural engineering.

I love what I do, so there's no doubt I'm going to love this new adventure!

Sleeplessness, Yelling, and Chasing...Adventures with Roma (& Midnight)

As Debbie blogged this week, Midnight now has a playmate...Roma. The newest Kadlec! Granted she probably would have preferred a small little kitty rather than a clumsy, rambunctious canine!

Well, I don't need to go into detail about all the "gimme's" of having a puppy...the accidents (both #1 and #2...gross!), the whining, the jumping, the running around like a crazy woman (yes, woman...crazy men don't run...), chasing the cat, chewing on everything, eating two of her new toys within hours (so we've bought the better, pricier ones and she's doing okay with these), etc etc etc.

But it gets better. Yesterday morning...early morning...at 445AM, Midnight decides to wake me up with her lovely heaving. Yup, doing the stereotypical cat throw up thing. It woke me up because she sleeps under my arm at night and for some reason she kicked me jumping off. I go ahead and try and get her before the "stuff" comes up so I could throw her onto the bathroom tile, but no...she got one off before I got to her. Then it was a chain reaction of Debbie shooting up, "what's going on?" Then it was Roma who was inside her kennel in the other room starting to whimper and whine. Debbie went and took her out (earlier than normal of course) and I spent the next 15 minutes with a vomiting cat! I came out of the bathroom just as Debbie got back to our bedroom. In a comedic moment we had Midnight whining and meowing to get out of the bathroom (but not until she was done puking) and Roma whining because she had to go back into her kennel! We were tired...no doubt...but in that moment the two of us started laughing...at 5AM because our animals our crying for us from both rooms! It ended up working out okay...but when I went to shower later that morning Midnight decided to leave me a present...treating our bath tub as her litter box! Oye!!

Today topped that whole extravaganza...as today is my last weekday before I head back to work (I'll blog the details later today or this weekend), I was getting some housework done (i.e. vacuuming, showers, etc). As I was cleaning the carpet downstairs (thanks to the rain I tracked in two giant muddy footprints), Roma joined me running back and forth...she was doing the whole "puppy" thing. I opened the door slightly to shake out the downstairs carpet when she nudges the door with her nose and goes "bye bye!!!" Oh man, it was not pretty!! I went out barefoot chasing after a mini-greyhound! She is FAST!! She thought it was a game and started running left, right, left, hard cut to the right and around and around. It was like sprints for baseball all over again, it was rough! I started thinking of something Debbie once said when we talked about if Midnight ever got out (which she never would as she never goes too close to the door). Play with her, so I started doing stuff, kind of mocking/mimicking her. She started running towards me to get me and I pinned her down so hard! Yelled so loud! Scared the crap out of her! Grabbed her and stormed home...didn't put her down until I got upstairs and threw her in the guest bathroom!! She whined and whimpered for a while as I caught my breath and finished my cleaning up on the stairs. When I let her out she knew who was boss, she was still whining some! I had/have no sympathy here...I am still pissed at the little sh*t!

Anyways, doing a complete 180, we LOVE her! :-) She is a pup, and we are going to get her trained. Tonight she starts puppy classes...so we'll keep everyone up to date on her progress.

Oh and Midnight is holding her ground, she is laying some HARD hits into Roma's face. I mean she is constantly hissing and growling (as much as a cat can growl).

Soooo much fun over at the Kadlec's right now! So much that we are tired, losing our voices, and fatigued from the chasing!

The New Kadlec pup

ROMA!

Terence and I have been looking for a dog for a while now, well after searching on petfinder.com we headed out to Buster's Friends, a rescue center in Highland Village. I have been searching for a big 'ole dog while Terence prefers the smaller dogs (aka: pugs). We originally went to look at Trixie, a Lab/Golden Retriever mix, and man she was huge! There was no way we could handle her in our apartment, but then we saw a little black lab...

She was so cute and the perfect combo size for what Terence and I wanted. First we did a kitty test at the center, and she passed! After accepting our application we were on our way with our new black pup. After spending our fair shares worth in Petsmart we headed home.

She's pretty playful still as a puppy, but thinks she is a lap dog of course! Terence took her to the vet today and they estimate she is a Lab/Terrier/possibly pug mix (ha! now Terence can saw I let him get a pug)! Whatever she is they expect her to still double in size, and at almost six months 17 lbs. she'll get just tall enough to scoop our dinners of the table :-) Yeah we learned that lesson quick!

We will get some more pics up later, poor pup is exhausting her new parents!

Oh and for those of you that are worried about our little kiddy she is holding her ground just fine. She definitely wins the staring contests and gets plenty curious with Roma for only the second day!

Also, Trixie unfortunately was not adopted this weekend, but we saw her in person and was a very sweet animal if anyone has some room for her!

The Wilton Rose

Tonight was the last class of my first Wilton Cake Decorating course.

Since Terence is out of town this week visiting his family in Florida, I decided to bring the cake to work, because honestly at this point it doesn't even sound good! I made a 9-inch double layered funfetti cake, smooth iced at home. As you can see I did get down that 90 degree angle on the edges, but it appears that I skimped too much on the icing and I think it looks a little bare. The 90 degree angle was achieved by using a blade to scrap the sides, THEN across the cake, not from the bottom of the sides up across the cake (like I did last week).

Throughout the course we have been learning parts of the Wilton rose technique. The base of the rose, built with a tip #12, and the petals in rows of 1, 3, 5, and 7, tip #104. You can even watch a how-to video on wilton.com. I can't say that I mastered the rose, there may have been some cursing, but I did end up getting a few good ones out. I eventually got the leaves to come out right as well, using tip # 352. Although the "leaf green" Wilton icing color looks more like neon green to me! After the centerpiece was in on the cake, I added some simple dots, tip #3, and a seashell border, tip #21 and voila!

Hope everyone enjoys work tomorrow!

Oh and if anyone is interested, Michael's is offering 50% off classes for the month of February.

Warning...clowns are involved!

Tuesday was my 3rd Wilton Cake course one class. We had to make a clown cake, umm yeah?! Well it's done and I learned some good lessons from this cake so it was all worth it.

As you saw my earlier post, Babka and Cake Prep, I smooth iced the cake and if you look my corners are curved at the top, well ideally they would be a perfect 90 degree angle. So I learned how to fix that and will hopefully have it go much better for next week. This week I made the perfect medium consistency icing so I was able to practice dots, writing, stars, and the beginning of the Wilton Rose! One thing I did learn about my icing, was to not be cheap! I went to Walmart to buy up all of my cake supplies for the entire class because they are the cheapest grocery store around here. I bought Walmart brand vegetable shortening and you can totally tell. The icing isn't as smooth as my practice book and not as smooth as the others in my class. So this week I will be buying the name brand shortening because I don't want my roses to be all crinkly!

As for the taste of the Red Velvet cake with cream cheese filling, eh. I told you I used all-purpose flour instead of cake flour, well you can definitely tell. The cake is not as soft and fragile as I would have hoped, but the cream cheese filling was awesome! I guess I'll know for next time!